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Fricassee of Frogs

A French-style stew of frog hindquarters cooked with butter, garlic, herbs, wine, cream, egg yolk, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fricassee of Frogs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and prepare the hind quarters of the frogs.

  2. Blanch them and place in cold water.

Make the fricassee

  1. Drain and put in a stewpan with butter, garlic, parsley, onions, chives, sweet herbs, and spices.

  2. Soak on low heat without browning for a few minutes.

  3. Add wine, a little stock, and salt; stew slowly for 20 minutes.

  4. Stir in cream, then finish with egg yolk and lemon juice.

  5. Garnish with lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Frog hind quarters
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the slow stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while the aromatics soften gently without browning.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce as it is stirred in.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce gently and gives it a smooth, rich texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the rich cream and yolk.

The step that matters

Finishing the sauce with egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when it is added, the yolk can scramble and turn grainy. Adding lemon juice can also curdle a hot sauce, so keep the heat low.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, garlic, parsley, onion, chive, white wine, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, garlic, parsley, onion, chive, white wine, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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